31FoT 2011 Final Recap and Awards Show!

Happy Halloween, friends!

I hope you’ve had fun reading (and watching!) along with me during my annual trek through the cinema of the scary and strange. This year we rattled off no less than 31 movies and 12 TV show episodes. Averaging a little over 1,000 words per post that’s more than 43,000 words – roughly the length of a short novel. Adding in a full-time day job and two unavoidable weekends out of town, I’m pretty pleased.

Here’s this year’s movie list:

1. Tucker & Dale vs Evil
2. Shadow of a Doubt
3. The Changeling
4. Stake Land
5. Ravenous
6. TrollHunter
7. The Human Centipede (First Sequence)
8. The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence)
9. Insidious
10. Scream 4
11. Piranha
12. Frailty
13. The Resurrected
14. The Thing (2011)
15. Priest
16. Creature from the Black Lagoon
17. Deadgirl
18. Lifeforce
19. The Last Exorcism
20. Red State
21. Pieces
22. Paranormal Activity 3
23. Frogs
24. Let Me In
25. Good Neighbors
26. Quarantine 2: Terminal
27. Frontiers
28. Q
29. Atrocious
30. C.H.U.D.
31. Attack the Block

Blogging really is a lot of fun and I had a blast writing this. It’s hard work and when you do it on a strict schedule, even a self-imposed one like mine, you almost never finish a post feeling like you got it all exactly right. But at the end of the day you come away with a tangible literary product that’s out there in the world for anyone to read and find typos in. That’s really cool.

You have to respect people who blog every day with little or no expectation that anyone will ever take note of what they have to say. I’ve been really lucky to have some great friends and loved ones who supported and promoted me, and I’ve gotten some great notice from the wonderful Google+ community. (Thanks, Heather!) Not everyone is so lucky.

Ideally all the hardworking, talented writers and artists who deserve it will find an audience to appreciate their work. Alas most will work in obscurity until they can no longer afford the time. It’s not fair but anyone alive right now is extremely fortunate that a medium like the internet exists and that it’s so easy to create a professional looking piece of entertainment that will persist for as long as the terms of your account allow. It’s a shard of immortality that wasn’t available to previous generations and for that much I’m grateful.

Before we wrap up this year, I thought it might be fun to list my personal top 10 Halloween movies of all time. If you haven’t seen any of these, I recommend checking them out tonight! As with the rest of my Flavor selections, these aren’t all horror or even necessarily scary. Just good movies that go well with the holiday season (and a nice Chianti).

10. Signs

9. Bubba Ho-Tep

8. Shaun of the Dead

7. Close Encounters of the Third Kind

6. Night of the Living Dead

5. Rear Window

4. Aliens

3. Halloween

2. Jaws

1. The Thing

Have suggestions for movies I missed? Lemme hear ’em! In the meantime, the Grim Reaper suggests you enjoy…

The 31 Flavors of Terror 2011 I-Scream Awards!

Best TV Show: The Walking Dead (Season 2). American Horror Story is great fun but Walking Dead is so vastly improved from last year it gets the nod. Bedlam kinda blows. But that’s no reason to cancel it BBC America – we need more genre fare!

Goriest Flavor: The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence). This could have just as easily been Piranha, but you have to give the edge to the movie with more shit eating.

Scariest Flavor: Insidious. Paranormal Activity 3 was right up there but I’ll go with the one that wasn’t an unnecessary sequel.

Most Nicable Flavor: Shadow of a Doubt but Creature from the Black Lagoon is a close second. Neither one will keep you up at night.

Funniest Flavor (Intentional): Attack the Block. By far.

Funniest Flavor (Unintentional): Priest. Barf.

Biggest Letdown: Scream 4. No Scream 5, thank you.

Worst Flavor: Frogs. I take full responsibility for this one, never shoulda let it happen.

Best Flavor: Attack the Block! Ravenous was a close runner-up with Deadgirl and Let Me In both in the mix.

That’s it for this edition of the 31 Flavors of Terror. No bonus liveblog this year because frankly my ass is kicked and I need a night off. I’m hoping to bring the Flavors back next year, but it may be tough. My wife and I recently learned that we will be otherwise occupied.

I leave you with a promotional still from our very own co-produced monster movie, coming out spring 2012.